The Civil Aeronautics Administration (CAA) yesterday said that as of last month, it had ordered Far Eastern Air Transport (FAT) to reduce its fleet’s total flight hours due to the age of its aircraft and other operational issues.
It was the first time a domestic airline was ordered to limit its total flight hours.
The airline confirmed that it had been ordered to reduce its total flight hours, and said that it is operating 1,300 hours each month.
Photo: courtesy of Far Eastern Air Transport
A plan to improve flight safety and operational efficiency was submitted to the CAA, which is now reviewing it, the airline said.
It said that it hopes to have total flight hours back up to 1,400 hours next month.
FAT has a higher flight delay rate than other domestic carriers and frequently reports mechanical problems with its aircraft, the CAA said, adding that it has received many complaints from FAT passengers.
The restriction on flight hours led to the cancelation of charter flights between Kaohsiung, Taichung and Phnom Penh, the airline said.
However, it said it is not planning to resume the charters even after its restriction on hours is lifted.
Even before the CAA’s order last month, the airline had been told to limit the number of its international charter flights.
FAT has the oldest fleet of the nation’s domestic carriers, CAA data showed. It has eight McDonnell Douglas (MD)-82/83 passenger jets, which have an average age of more than 21 years.
For safety reasons, the CAA has only allowed two of the planes to be used on domestic flights, while the others can only be used for international flights if the CAA gives permission.
The CAA said it would consider gradually increasing the airline’s flight hours after the company starts using new ATR aircraft later this year.
In related news, the tests on a FAT pilot who was caught drinking before reporting for duty at Kaohsiung International Airport on March 7 showed that the pilot’s blood-alcohol level was 4.2 times higher than regulation limits.
A group of Taiwanese-American and Tibetan-American students at Harvard University on Saturday disrupted Chinese Ambassador to the US Xie Feng’s (謝鋒) speech at the school, accusing him of being responsible for numerous human rights violations. Four students — two Taiwanese Americans and two from Tibet — held up banners inside a conference hall where Xie was delivering a speech at the opening ceremony of the Harvard Kennedy School China Conference 2024. In a video clip provided by the Coalition of Students Resisting the CCP (Chinese Communist Party), Taiwanese-American Cosette Wu (吳亭樺) and Tibetan-American Tsering Yangchen are seen holding banners that together read:
UNAWARE: Many people sit for long hours every day and eat unhealthy foods, putting them at greater risk of developing one of the ‘three highs,’ an expert said More than 30 percent of adults aged 40 or older who underwent a government-funded health exam were unaware they had at least one of the “three highs” — high blood pressure, high blood lipids or high blood sugar, the Health Promotion Administration (HPA) said yesterday. Among adults aged 40 or older who said they did not have any of the “three highs” before taking the health exam, more than 30 percent were found to have at least one of them, Adult Preventive Health Examination Service data from 2022 showed. People with long-term medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes usually do not
Heat advisories were in effect for nine administrative regions yesterday afternoon as warm southwesterly winds pushed temperatures above 38°C in parts of southern Taiwan, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said. As of 3:30pm yesterday, Tainan’s Yujing District (玉井) had recorded the day’s highest temperature of 39.7°C, though the measurement will not be included in Taiwan’s official heat records since Yujing is an automatic rather than manually operated weather station, the CWA said. Highs recorded in other areas were 38.7°C in Kaohsiung’s Neimen District (內門), 38.2°C in Chiayi City and 38.1°C in Pingtung’s Sandimen Township (三地門), CWA data showed. The spell of scorching
POLICE INVESTIGATING: A man said he quit his job as a nurse at Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital as he had been ‘disgusted’ by the behavior of his colleagues A man yesterday morning wrote online that he had witnessed nurses taking photographs and touching anesthetized patients inappropriately in Taipei Tzu Chi Hospital’s operating theaters. The man surnamed Huang (黃) wrote on the Professional Technology Temple bulletin board that during his six-month stint as a nurse at the hospital, he had seen nurses taking pictures of patients, including of their private parts, after they were anesthetized. Some nurses had also touched patients inappropriately and children were among those photographed, he said. Huang said this “disgusted” him “so much” that “he felt the need to reveal these unethical acts in the operating theater